Under Paris

Synopsis: A human-killing shark takes up residence in the Seine, just before a big triathlon swim. 

This time it’s not the Phantom of the Opera who is haunting the underbelly of Paris. It’s a shark named Lilith. She’s making her way along the Seine and sidling into the catacombs’ waterways.

Now, I didn’t even know that there were catacombs (underground cemeteries) in Paris. In the 1700’s, the cemeteries were over-filling, so remains were exhumed and dumped into quarries on the city’s outskirts. Then some weirdo in the 1800’s got the idea to arrange the skulls and bones into walls and towers. Dear God!

After a little reading, I’m almost as afraid of these human bone collections in the catacombs of Paris as I am of sharks. At least if I’m at an aquarium, I can admire the sharks from dry land, safely marveling at the ocean apex predators that evolution begot. Not so with these human bone yards, I would be aghast looking at the arrangements of human bones even though I know that they, too, cannot get me. I’d run away as fast as I could, screaming things like, Horrors! Ghouls be gone!

I was glad that the movie Under Paris is about sharks and not millions of human bones. Let’s zip off to the Pacific Ocean…

Lovely, yes? Well, except for the fact that a group of marine biologists are on a research boat in the Great Pacific garbage patch. Sounds magnificent, doesn’t it? Miles of floating and suspended ocean debris, lots and lots of plastic. The scientists have followed the beacon signals from a very large mako shark named Lilith. The head of the team is a Frenchwoman, Sophia (Bérénice Bejo of The Artist fame). Four of Sophie’s cohorts dive into the water, seeking Lilith. Sophia wants them to use a sort of harpoon to get a tissue sample from the beast. Somehow, I feel that that will anger Lilith.

It’s all suspenseful and scary as the divers make their way through garbage and tangled nets.  Lilith is sneaking around them. She probably remembers these people harpooning her to attach the tracking beacon. Damn these jerks! she’s probably thinking.

The divers become disoriented, and scared too, when other sharks start circling. Mon Dieu! Sophia wants that tissue sample and encourages her husband! to harpoon toothy Lilith instead of immediately swimming for their lives back to the boat. I won’t tell you what happens, but the story jumps to three years later in Paris.

Sophia is now teaching about marine life, which includes lecturing some bratty field trip students. The firebrand we met has turned into a more subdued figure.

Meanwhile, we meet some Paris cops. There is a team that patrols the Seine and its banks. Unlike the great shark movie Jaws, Under Paris has human characters who are not all white. Although there was that one white lady in Jaws who had over tanned her skin to a leathery mahogany. Anyway…

The riparian police team has numerous POC, including Adil (Nassim Lyes). Adil is a sexy cop. He’s also evolved; he checks on the welfare of people who camp along the Seine. One fellow drinks too much and dances unsteadily at the water’s edge. Suspense! Because we learn that a shark may be in the Seine. Impossible! you say?

Mika (Léa Léviant), a radical young woman from Save Our Seas (SOS) has made contact with Sophia. She and her fellow ocean lovers work out of a crumpled building, employing the latest software to hack into fishing boats’ radar and disrupt their raids on schools of fish. She tells Sophia that they have found Lilith’s beacon signal, and it is beeping from the Seine.

Sophia is skeptical, but grabs her old equipment that night and begins following the signal which does indeed lead her down to the river. At the same time, Mika and her girlfriend Ben (Nagisa Morimoto), a fellow SOS member, decide to get in a little rubber boat and surreptitiously dive down to a car that drove off a bridge a few days before. It seems that the police should’ve taken care of that, but what do I know?

A busy night unfolds for Sophia, the divers and the river cops. Adil and Sophia meet and she tells him about Lilith. He scoffs at first, but then hears her out. Adil seems a tortured soul. At one point we see him at his desk, gazing sadly at a framed pic of him and some fellow soldiers. I wondered if they had, somehow, had been eaten by a shark.

I worried for the pedestrians along the Seine, they walk and lounge so close to the river’s edge. But how many people trip into the Seine, really? The filmmakers solve the problem of too few potential victims by staging a triathlon in Paris. The swim portion will be held in –you guessed it– the Seine.

Sophia and Adil have determined that Lilith is in the Seine, when she is not, she is, lurking in the waterways of the catacombs. I couldn’t find out whether any of the catacombs’ tunnels are waterways, but the film says they are. Waterways where people like to walk along paths close to the water.

Adil and Sophia take charge. They have some chemistry and seem to have bonded during a few scary dives into Paris’ waterways. But they keep their attention on the matter at hand; Paris’ latest immigrant, Lilith the Mako Shark.

A meeting with the mayor (Anne Marivin) is hastily arranged. Sophia and Adil inform the mayor of the massive shark in the Seine. Madame la Maire scowls as she stabs at her lunch salade. Non, Non, Non, she says, C’est ridicule! Nothing will stop the triathlon swim. Like the mayor in Jaws’ Amity, they will imagine away the shark, because nothing must interfere with business. Likewise, she is brusque behind the scenes, and a gladhander in public.

Under Paris does a good job updating the shark movie genre. Attention is paid to climate change and our imperiled marine life. Both things that are humans’ fault and would surely enrage Lilith, if she knew.

The tension is ratcheted up as dozens of tasty swimmers jump into the Seine for the competition. Spectators gather close to the water’s edge, jostling each other for the best view.

Naturally, Sophia and Adil are not only boating on the Seine in a flimsy rubber boat, tracking Lilith, but the plot will require them to get right into the water to redirect hungry Lilith.

Compounding stresses, Adil and Sophia are so busy running along the Seine and diving its waters, they are reduced to eating junk food from vending machines instead of indulging in long lunches, enjoying one of the world’s great cuisines.

It’s one thing for Lilith to feast on fishes and land mammals (us people), but when she starts messing with French culture, things have clearly gone too far. Either Lilith must be humanely dynamited or relocated to the Great Atlantic garbage patch. Yes, sadly, our planet’s other great ocean has its own great garbage patch too.

Maybe, just like French Gen Z’ers in Save Our Seas, Lilith is fed up with humans’ overfishing and polluting and is making a political statement with her invasion of Paris via the Seine. Or… she could just be hungry.

P.S. Check out Movie Loon’s review of Jaws

Movie Loon’s Movie Review Shortcut:

Grade:   B-

Cut to the Chase: Some good CGI, suspense, and cheesy dialog.

Humor Highlight: The arrogant, spotlight-grabbing mayor.